


Old Devils

by Superstition_hockey



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Best Friends, Bond vs the changing world, Don't post anywhere else, Figuring out your sexuality in your 40s, M/M, Patriotism, Post Spectre, spy games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 09:24:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey
Summary: When things fall apart with Madeleine, and he comes back, M doesn't even bother looking surprised that his retirement lasted less than a month. He tells him he's less 3 weeks of vacation time, then gives him the sort of routine mission that they'd usually only give to low level field agents.
Relationships: James Bond/Alec Trevelyan, James Bond/OC, Pre James Bond/Q, pre James Bond/Q/Alec Trevelyan
Comments: 94
Kudos: 470





	Old Devils

**Author's Note:**

> Markedly not original hockey fiction. This has been sitting in my google docs for months, and I finally talked myself into posting.

When things fall apart with Madeleine, and he comes back, M doesn't even bother looking surprised that his retirement lasted less than a month. He tells him he's less 3 weeks of vacation time, then gives him the sort of routine mission that they'd usually only give to low level field agents. 

Bond stakes out the Florida home of a drug trafficker they suspect is beginning to branch out into arms dealing to some groups with terrorist ties. No contact, no action taken, just… watching. Gathering data. He's implanted in a landscaping company, given the _hilarious_ cover name of Randy (Moneypenny thinks she's so very clever), and spends three weeks mowing grass, trimming hedges, pulling weeds, and drinking cafe cubanos with the rest of the grounds crew in the maintenance office. The most dangerous moment of the whole mission involves Bond having to shoo an alligator off of a lawn chair so that the mark's 15 year old daughter can film a Vine by the pool with her friends.

The grounds crew has a special alligator catching stick. Bond catches the thing, throws it in the back of the company pickup, and drives with Miguel to release it back into the swamp five miles away. 

“We don't kill it?” Bond asks.

Miguel just looks at him with a raised eyebrow. “Boss's daughter is vegan.”

Bond closes his eyes and imagines how easy his Cold War predecessors had it. Then he lets himself fantasize, briefly, of what he would be doing if he was capable of shaking that persistent loyalty to Queen and Country, and go freelance. His legs feel restless, fingers itching. 

Every evening he sends an encrypted file containing whatever data he managed to collect that day, through a disguised link Q sends him. Maybe the most dangerous part of the mission is actually how angered the CIA and NSA would be to find that MI6 has put a double-oh agent within their borders without permission, but it's not a particularly interesting sort of danger. 

Bond doesn't disappear in the night, leaving a wake of burning destruction behind him. “Randy” doesn't show up to work one Monday, and around 1p.m., Bond calls in to explain that he went to visit his ex-wife, got arrested for his 4th DUI, and will now be sitting in a tiny county jail somewhere in central Florida on a $50,000 bond until his prelim hearing in 2 weeks. Miguel tells him he's sorry to hear that and he'll tell the rest of the guys, and like that, Randy is forgotten. 

Bond exits the country the same way he came in, by fishing boat, then a long swim, then a yacht that takes him to Barbados, and then a commercial flight in economy+ class that takes him back to Heathrow.

“I've been patient,” Bond tells M, after debrief, “I've paid my dues, I've shown I can be a good little boy. Now give me some real sodding work.”

“What an interestingly apropos turn of phrase,” M remarks and slides a tablet towards him. 

Bond flips through the open file, and looks back up at M, who has his hands folded neatly on his desk. “You’re not my first pick for this mission, 007, but 005 is busy in Hong Kong. Is it going to be a problem?” 

Bond wonders what part M thinks will be the problem for him: the long term cover aspect, when Bond has never really been known for his patience; the long term cover-as-a-lover aspect, so soon after Madeleine; or the fact that the mark is a man.

“Not at all, M.” Bond answers with his blandest smile. 

“Good. Brief in an hour, and then you can spend the next two days preparing and reviewing the file. Your flight to Bogota leaves Sunday afternoon, Q will have your kit for you before then.”

Q opens his mouth like he’s going to say something a few times while sorting Bond's kit. There’s not much -- the Walther. A flash drive. A Q-doctored mobile phone. No radio. Sadly, but a surprise to no one, no exploding pen. He takes his trousers off and lets one of Q’s minion’s insert a tiny, barely visible chip deep into the flesh of his thigh. Lets them put some kind of nano ink on his skin of his forearm. When the minion leaves the room, Q says, “I know you’ve had honey pot missions with men before but you’ve never had to actually pretend to be an out and proud member of the gay community.” He makes a wry face, “if you need any pointers….” 

“Why, Q,” Bond drawls, “your timing’s all wrong. You should've come over last night with an offer like that.” 

Q flushes just barely pink along the height of his cheekbones, but his face remains admirably calm, “That’s not what I meant and you know it. It’s not all sex. You’re about as convincing a gay man as I am straight.” 

“Hmmmm….” Bond holsters the Walther, slides the mobile into his pocket and grins, “Well, I appreciate the offer, quartermaster, but I’ve a flight to catch.” 

The mark is the son and only child of a Colombian politician and coffee plantation owner with ties to Spectre and his fingers in lots of unsavory business in South America. The son went to university at UCLA and came back home to work in the family business with his MBA and a refusal to stay in the closet. Papa, apparently, took the news better than expected, his son is neither dead nor disowned back to California. 

Bond, in the guise of a former British SAS officer now turned mercenary, gets a drink in a bar his mark frequents. He has a beer, leans against a wall and waits. He watches Angel Cordova drink with his friends for 10 minutes while he plans his approach. He’s Bond’s height with golden brown hair in thick waves, and lips that make Bond think that at least the next six months won’t be a trial for his libido. Bond buys him a beer, hand resting on his shoulder, fingers just grazing his neck. He shivers underneath Bond’s fingers, despite the heat. Later, Bond pushes him down to his knees in a bathroom stall, gets his hand in that hair, and chokes him on his dick, exactly the way Bond can tell he wanted Bond to. 

Bond sets his hook with a month of off-and-on casual hookups and booty calls. Angel calls him “daddy” in English while Bond fucks him on his hotel mattress and shoots off in seconds when Bond gets rough with him, but is friendly and relaxed after sex. Funny. The length of time between orgasm and Bond leaving or kicking him out, depending on their location, lengthens according to plan. They watch Friends reruns with Spanish dubbing. Angel eats dry cereal in bed, from the box, getting crumbs in the sheets, and Bond turns him over his knee and spanks him for it until he’s whimpering, grinding his erection against Bond’s thigh, and pleading to come. 

Q-Branch’s new prototype ink means Bond has what looks like a sun-faded, poorly done 20 year old military tattoo on his forearm, even though he got it hours before his flight out. It will start to fade in six months, be gone completely in less than eight. Angel drags his fingertips along it lightly, while Bond smokes a cigarette in bed. Along the GSW scar on his shoulder from where Moneypenny shot him. Bond leans over and kisses Angel on the forehead. “I’m not a very good man,” he tells him, a soft breath against his ear. 

“I can tell,” Angel smiles into his chest. 

“What’s the worst thing you've ever done?” Angel asks him the next morning when he’s making coffee in his kitchen. Angel keeps an apartment in the city, away from his father’s house. He’s barefoot in nothing but his pants, tiny little boxer-briefs in bright blue, so tight over the swell of his ass Bond is having trouble not bending him over the counter and fucking him for the second time this morning. 

“There's a long list of things to choose from,” Bond answers honestly, eyes still drifting south. He steps up behind Angel, bites gently at the nape of his neck, lets his hands slide along his belly possessively, “what do you think an old soldier like me is doing in South America, sweetheart? A man’s gotta make a living.” 

Angel sighs, leans back into him, “How do you feel about meeting my father?” 

“Moving a little fast there, baby,” Bond bites his neck again, because despite what Mallory and Q and the rest of fucking MI6 thinks, he does actually know how to be patient in the field. “I’m not really suitable for meet-the-parents.” 

“I think,” Angel gasps, as Bond palms his ass, presses with this thumb against his hole through the cotton his shorts, “You might be surprised.” 

Bond is no stranger to fucking men. Espionage requires, absolutely, two things - flexibility and ruthlessness. Bond has always been willing to do whatever it takes to complete the mission. Sometimes being a Double-Oh means Aston Martins and bespoke suits, bedding the beautiful lonely housewife of yet another megalomaniac bent on world destruction, or fucking/fighting dangerous gorgeous counter-agents in helicopter hangars. Sometimes it also means charming a 65 year old businessman who’s planning on having a biofuel research academic murdered in the next two days. Work is work. Fucking a limber 25 year old with a mouth made for sucking dick hardly counts as a trial. 

Bond turns down Angel’s invitation to meet his father two more times. The third time Angel pouts and sulks until Bond cooks him dinner, complete with chocolate souffle for dessert, then eats him out until he’s crying, keeping him on edge for an hour before finally letting him come. 

“Ask me again if you can still stand me in a month,” Bond says, brushing sweaty hair out of Angel’s eyes. Their mission timeline has enough room for Bond to take his time with it. 

Bond takes a handful of short term mercenary side jobs to maintain his cover. There's talk of The FARC entertaining peace talks, but there's no shortage of black book jobs from guys being paid by guys being paid by the CIA. He comes home smelling like gun oil and sweat. “You smell like every bad man coming in and out of my house when I was growing up,” Angel pants as Bond shifts his legs over his shoulder and hammers into him in a spectacular round of welcome-home sex. Bond clamps his hand over his mouth to shut him up and Angel comes against his belly in five seconds.

“You are some kind of fucked up, kid,” Bond says, not unkindly, in the afterglow. 

“Look who’s talking,” Angel murmurs, and falls asleep on his chest. 

The first time he takes Angel out to dinner, Angel laces his fingers through Bond’s and Bond tenses for just a second, before he wills his shoulders down. The waiter is unfazed as he seats them, but Bond feels on edge all night. 

“Thank you,” Angel sighs into a kiss when they get home that night. It’s the first time Bond’s ever felt a little guilty. 

Three days later Bond comes home to find six armed men in his hotel room. Angel’s father is sitting at the little kitchenette table. 

“Mr. Sterling.” 

“Mr. Cordova,” Bond answers cautiously. 

“Have a seat, Mr. Sterling, it seems we have much to discuss.” 

Angel comes over three hours later. He takes one look at Bond, drinking whiskey out of a glass on the balcony and says, “so you met my father.” 

“Charming man,” Bond says, “how involved are you in his business?”

Angel sits down next to him, takes the whiskey bottle and takes a long swallow, before handing it back to Bond. “I don’t…” He clears his throat, “I have a business degree. I manage his stock portfolio, take care of some of the other company investments, I rewrote the business model for the coffee. I’m not involved with anything else.” 

“Have you ever thought of… not?”

Angel's laugh is bitter. “That's really not an option.”

Bond looks at him. “He wants me to hunt down and kill two men who double crossed him in an arms deal. For the privilege of dating you.” 

Angel closes his eyes. “And are you going to?” 

Bond stands. Lifts Angel in one quick motion to throw him over his shoulder, “I’ll be out of town for the next few days so let’s see if I can fuck you well enough to keep you satisfied in my absence.” 

It ends, four months later, the way these things always end. With death and ash and gunshots. Surprising maybe, that Angel lives. 

“Fuck. You.” He tells Bond, tears making tracks through the soot on his face. “Just, fuck you, James.”

Considering Bond killed the man's father not 20 minutes prior, he's a little surprised that this goodbye doesn't include a gun pointed in Bond's face.

“Sweetheart,” Bond says, tracing a tear with his thumb, “I didn't ever lie.” 

It's much worse than being shot at: Angel dives headfirst into the crux of Bond's shoulder, weeping into his sweat soaked t-shirt, fingers tensing like talons into Bond's side, clutching. After six months of playing house, Bond's arm wraps around him out of muscle memory, before he can stop it. 

“Maybe,” Bond says into his hair, “now you can manage portfolios for some company that's not a major organized crime syndicate, in the future.”

“Maybe you could try not to be such insensitive ass, you heartless fucking bastard.”

“It’s not really a strong suit.” 

Bond doesn't go straight back to England. He goes to Antigua, spends a week drinking white rum and fucking the beautiful, curvaceous concierge at his hotel, until his phone pings with a message from an unknown number. 

_If you're quite finished_, we're all duly reassured of your continuing heterosexuality, past 6 months notwithstanding. You're expected back by Wednesday. I've forwarded you your flight info.”

Coming back after so long undercover is always hard. Bond's flat feels like it belongs to someone else. English accents sound strange and foreign. 

There's a moment back in London, when Q bends his head over the Walther that Bond returns. The aberrant thought passes through Bond's mind - what it would feel like to sink his hands into those curls, gone almost as soon as it appears. 

Bond picks up a new hire from accounting with red hair and fuchsia lipstick who knows exactly what he's looking for. He breaks her rickety IKEA bed frame, and they relocate the mattress to the floor for rounds 3 and 4. By the end of his two days downtime, she's walking with a wobble, and he's nearly fucked the sense of wrongness out of his system. 

Bond goes on missions to Hangzhou, Belgrade, Mogadishu, Dublin, St. Petersburg. He turns the girlfriend of a bio engineer who's designing weaponized Measles in Warsaw, but leaves asset management to the field agent team; falls off the Orient Express, injuring his bad shoulder and ruining his best dinner suit outside of Varna; seduces the wife of an Englishman who's behind a large scale human trafficking operation in Ibiza. 

She comes once from his tongue and fingers, a second time with his cock buried in her and his thumb on her clit, a third time afterwards, lying next to him, kissing while he fingers her slow and leisurely. Afterwards, when her eyes are already fluttering to sleep, he brushes the hand up her leg before hitting the button on the watch Q-branch had provided. The tiny needle just barely punctures the thin delicate skin of her thigh, and she's out, unconscious, for at least 4 hours. She'll wake in the morning thinking she had a good night sleep after a great shag, and Bond has all the time be needs to search through her things. 

Bond finds her laptop, her cell phone, then a false panel in her luggage containing a second laptop that’s missing any WiFi network capabilities. . 

“Well done, 007,” the man handling comms says when Bond uses the flash drive Q sent him off with, “90 seconds and it'll be through the encryption and downloaded whatever we’ve got here.”

Bond hums in answer, glances behind him to make sure Victoria is still asleep, even though he knows, with the drug she's been given, there's no way she won't be. 

“Well done on that, too.” The comms agent on the other side comments, “you had her toes curling.”

Something tenses between Bond's shoulders. “I didn’t realize I was under surveillance for that part.” He definitely hadn’t had his comms in. 

“Q likes to keep tabs for the double-oh's for that part if he can,doesn't he? It’s when you're most vulnerable, with your kit off, going at it, never know when you some bints going to drag out the poison lipstick, right? Anyway, hotel TV has a camera lens for video chat, easy to hack into it. Thanks for the show. Oh, there we are, all done. Information's all here, 007, you can remove the flash drive, we'll work on sorting--” he's cut off abruptly, and then Bond hears Q's voice. 

“007, I apologize for the inappropriateness, we have some new hires on staff, it won't happen again. The download is complete. Continue on with the rest of your agenda for the evening, we'll have a check in tomorrow at 1100 hours local time. Please keep your earpiece in, in case anything we find is actionable immediately.” 

“Understood.” Bond manages, and then, “turn off the bloody feed from the TV, Q.”

“Already done, 007.”

Foolish to expect privacy anywhere on a mission, anyway, especially in this brave new world of cyber security and oversight. 

It's nothing he won't have to go over in debrief, either way. 

Bond secures the flash drive then slides back into bed. There's no chance of him sleeping tonight but he can fake it, kiss her through a round of morning sex tomorrow, and leave with no suspicion, Q's program leaving no trace. 

He's resting two hours later, eyes closed, but mind drifting with his breathing, when his earpiece clicks on. 

“007.” Q's voice is deadly serious, “is Ms. Williamson still asleep?” 

“Yes,” Bond whispers.

“We've reviewed the intel, Marc Williamson is not the leader of this organization.”

“Who is?”

“Victoria.”

Bond looks over at the sleeping woman next to him. “Does M want her dead or alive?”

There's a brief pause. “Alive.” 

Bond breathes out slowly. “That will take me a little more work. Do you have an exit for me that will allow me to carry an unconscious woman out of a hotel without anyone noticing?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Listen carefully, 007, this is going to have be perfectly timed.”

Q gets him out of the hotel smoothly enough, and Victoria Williamson will wake up in a holding cell somewhere belonging to the Intelligence Service, but when Bond spends the next month and a half hunting down the rest of her organization, it gets messy. 

Bad intel, bad luck, a field agent that goes missing the day before he and Bond were supposed to rendezvous, some infuriating orders from communications, and Bond manages to keep the entire operation from going tits up, but just barely. 

He loses his Walther in the flow of the Tagus, and by the time he drags himself back into Lisbon, he's got two cracked ribs, a swollen ankle, the slice of a knife wound against his ribs, stitched together with dental floss. At least three buildings are on fire, and the Polícia de Segurança Pública are pitching the sort of fit that’s going to put Mallory, _M_, in a snit for weeks. He’ll probably send Bond to Siberia. 

Bond’s singed, limping, and _seething_. He digs his tracker out with a box cutter, fingers trembling, dumps his mobile in the river, and decides he’ll make his own way back to London. A ride on the back of a lorry full of sheep takes him from Portugal to France. He finds his way to Germany on a cargo train.

He finds a bar in Dresden, careful to avoid getting his face on CCTV, pays cash for a room in a hostel a few blocks away that doesn’t ask for ID. The barman sets Bond's third martini in front of him with a wink and a lingering glance. 

It hits Bond, the idea, and he can't shake it off. He could… He could and no one would know. No one knows where he is, no one has eyes on him, he's taken so much care. It's nobody's business except Bond's, and he could keep it. A secret. A thing that never makes it to his file or his psych report, or his debrief. 

It's no secret to anyone that Bond is flexible in the field. But his preference on his own time has always been women. Bond's love of women is such common knowledge it's its own fable in Vauxhall. That's fine. Bond understands the usefulness of his own mythos. All the same, it’s all a bit tedious. The same game, the same lines, the same women no matter where on the planet he is. 

His name's Andreas. He works Bond open with three slick fingers and kisses his neck when he comes. It's not hurting anyone. It's nothing that could compromise him, nothing he could be blackmailed with, not anymore. Long gone are the days where dalliances like this could cost him his career. Its harmless, but it's a secret, for himself, something no one knows about the legendary James Bond. 

“Agents who fail to return even the most basic elements of their kit don't get any more specially modified watches or other treats,” Q tells him primly when Bond returns a crushed pair of standard issue binoculars and nothing else. 

“Oh, was that modified? I thought tranquilizers came standard on the Seamaster line now.”

Q looks at him over the rim of his spectacles. “Agents who dig out their microtracker-”

“Get what?” Bond smirks, “Six of the best from their quartermaster?”

Q is not bad at hiding his facial expressions in a building full of spies but he’s still an open book for anyone that knows how to read it; there’s the tiniest change in the muscles around his eye, a flex of his fingers for just a millisecond. Bond pushes. “A tinier, more hard to find leash?” Just a hint less iris, a fraction more pupil. 

He leans over the quartermaster's desk so that he can whisper,“a quiet bullet in the temple when they least expect it, when their usefulness no longer outweighs their unwillingness to always come to heel?” This close he can smell the bergamot on Q's breath, feel the warmth coming from him. 

“Bond…” 

“Going to schedule a psych eval for me, quartermaster?” Bond steps back, rolls back on his heels, hands in his pockets and smirking. 

“I was going to apologize, again, for Evans.”

“Evans?”

“With Ms. Williamson. We do monitor agents on those sort of missions when we have the capability, but only passively and only for the agent's safety. Your work is not… a spectacle to be viewed for this department's entertainment. Like I said, we had a few new hires. The situation has been addressed. It won't happen again.” 

“Evans got a write up, then” he makes himself joke, all perfect glass-slick amusement. “Don’t tell me you made him take the ‘hostile work environment’ seminar HR loves so much.” 

“He's been sacked.”

Bond blinks. “I hardly mind giving your boffins a chance to live a little, even if it’s vicariously. I don’t imagine they have much of a chance to get out much. 

“You can get out right now, please and thank you.” Q frowns, minutely.

“Funny, I thought we were talking about getting off.” Not his best parting shot, but he feels so off-footed it's the best he can manage. 

M gives him three weeks mandatory downtime to “rest his ankle.” In the first week, Bond puts 10,000 rounds down range, makes an appearance in his 1As as Commander Bond for a ceremony for an old colleague who's made Admiral, dodges medical five times, forgets he was supposed to attend a security seminar training Q was heading for field agents, swims 40 laps a day, reads a book about transistors, and goes through half a bottle of Scotch a night watching Russian game shows streamed online to keep his fluency up. 

He spends a lot of time people watching. 

He gets a coffee one afternoon at a cafe in Bloomsbury, sits outside at a table in the misty cold spring and watches the city. There’s only one other patron choosing to sit outside -- a uni student with Doc Martin boots, shiny neon pink leggings and an over-sized Pixies T-shirt. She doesn’t want anything to do with him, eyes flicking towards his suit, then immediately returning back to her textbook. She’s got a nose ring and spiky violet hair. 

“Do you mind?” Bond asks when he taps a cigarette against his case. 

She glances at him just briefly, shakes her head, eyes already back in her book. Her arms cross over it, legs tilting away from him. 

He sips his espresso. With his aviators on the table in front of him, angled as they are, he can read the title of her book without turning to peer at it. He waits five minutes, finishes his cigarette before he says anything to her again. 

He doesn’t flirt. Not overtly. Not with this sort of girl, not dressed as he is. She’d spook in seconds, be gone just like that. He keeps his eyes off her, mostly, no strong eye contact. Casual conversation. He asks about her book, and is told its about intersectional feminism. She tells him about that for a while, and Bond asks questions where he’s supposed to and nods where he’s supposed to. He moves the conversation from there to music, a subject the average university student can talk about ad nauseum. 

“I know who the Pixies are,” Bond laughs, catching her eyes, watching her look surprised at her own laughter, letting his own eyes crinkle at the cornees in an illusion of warmth. “They’re about as old as I am.” 

Bond tells her about Lisbon. Not about the burning buildings and the enraged PSP, or the familiar feeling of a man’s windpipe crushing beneath Bond’s hand, but about the city itself. The beaches. The countryside that surrounds it. Tells her about the ruins of Convento do Carmo. Shifts his chair a little closer. 

He can see the exact moment where she decides she would sleep with him. Maybe not even consciously, but it’s there in the way her body suddenly turns toward him not away, the way her smile blossoms and dimples, her shoulders following him, ankles uncrossing. She shivers with the chill of the evening air and Bond could offer her his suit jacket, too big and smelling like his cologne, warm from his body heat and she’d sink into it. Bond could offer to walk her home. He'd kiss her in a tiny kitchen of some student housing as soon as they got through the door. 

She shivers with the chill of the evening air and Bond looks at his watch. “It’s been lovely, Esther,” he says, “but I’d better be getting along. A pleasure to meet you, good luck on your exam on Friday.” 

There’s no need, really, to play the game all the way to its end when he already knows the outcome.

And anyway, in two hours conversation he knows the name of the street she grew up on as a child. Her mother’s maiden name. The name of her first pet, the school she went to, her favorite musician, her childhood crush. Bond could guess her password or PIN in three tries, and even if he was wrong, could reset it easily now that he knows the answer to the most likely security questions. 

Not that he needed it, of course, but it’s always satisfying to get a chance to practice on people outside the scope of the normal sort he deals with through MI6. 

When he walks into his flat, Q is kneeling on the tastefully bland area rug the interior designer had selected, screwdriver sticking out of the back pocket of his plaid trousers, head buried behind his entertainment system.

“Quartermaster,” Bond greets him, “to what do I owe the B&E?”

“The seminar was mandatory. Your flat's security is laughable.” 

“I hope you don’t expect me to learn my lesson this way,” Bond hums, and sits down on the couch, pours himself a glass of whiskey, and settles in to watch Q’s tight little ass bob up and down as he fiddles about with the wires behind Bond’s telly. 

After an hour, when Q's mouth is still full of wires, Bond silently orders a curry on his phone. Q is done with the television, has moved onto the alarm system on Bond's door, so Bond turns the telly on and hangs up his suit jacket. 

The sound of the doorman knocking, Bond taking his dinner and unboxing it in the kitchen hardly stirs Q from his task. He doesn’t look up until Bond sets a plate of chana masala and a veggie samosa down on the floor next to him. “Oh, thank you 007 but I’m veg---” He actually looks at the plate. Blinks. “Oh. That is what I normally order.” He seems surprised. He looks up at Bond, slightly hesitant. “Thank you, 007.”

“Take a break, and come eat with me.” 

Q waivers.

“You can fill me in on whatever else I missed in the training.” 

Q picks up his plate and settles on the couch next to Bond. “I’ve developed a coating for glass that thwarts passive laser monitoring of sound wave vibration. Six is having installed in all their top-clearance housing. The crew will be by to apply it in two days for you, in case you want to make arrangements to be elsewhere.” 

Bond takes a bite of his lamb vindaloo and hums in agreement. “You can change the channel if you like.” 

“No, no.” Q says, “I wouldn’t dare turn off Monty Don.” 

M spends a week smoothing things over between the PSP and Interpol and when Bond’s done with his downtime, he sends him someplace far more devious and vindictive than Siberia: he sends him on a joint-task force mission with the American CIA. 

Bond does not particularly like American intelligence agencies. Doesn’t like how they do business - both personally, as agents, and bureaucratically as an agency. And now M wants him to make nice with one of them while sweating to death in Damascus. 

“So. 007.” McLaughlan begins. He’s red-faced in the heat. “I’ve always wondered about that.” 

“Have you?” Bond doesn’t take his eyes from his binoculars trained out the window. He feels bored down to his very bones. Especially because he already knows exactly how this conversation is going to go.

“The fearsome double-ohs, with their license to kill.” 

“Mmmmm.” A street cat wanders across the street in front of Bond’s field of vision. He’s marmalade colored with a torn up left ear and wide spade-shaped head. An old soldier. 

“I always thought that was sort of funny.”

“Did you?” The cat lies down in the sun on his side and begins to wash its face.

“I mean, there’s sort of an implication there that if the double-oh’s are special because they have a license to kill, that all the rest of your field agents don’t.” He pauses, looking like he feels particularly clever. “Have a license to kill, I mean.”

“If you’re concerned about it, I can always have Jeffreys come upstairs and shoot you,” Bond offers. 

“Just making conversation,” McLaughlan laughs, hands up.

Bond’s ear clicks softly with the sound of his comms coming on. “I feel duty bound to inform you that you are not allowed to kill any Americans on this mission, 007.” There’s a slight pause. “Or to order your support agents to do so.” 

Bond supposed Q’s ability to find any loophole must be why he’s so very good at cyber security. 

Later, when McLaughlan has walked down the street to get them dinner, Bond says, “surely a division-head in MI6 has better things to do than monitor comms for one agent on a low-urgency mission.”

“At least 15 things of far greater importance just in the past hour,” Q’s response is immediate in his ear, “But M asked me to make sure they aren’t irritating you into an international incident so I’ve been keeping half an ear turned in your direction.” 

Bond rolls his eyes and chuckles. “Six of the best from the quartermaster if someone accidentally falls off of a balcony?”

“In general I find more success in incentivizing good behavior. I’m working on some customizations to a black and steel Omega Planet Ocean I think you’ll enjoy very much, 007, but if you’re naughty, I’m sending you on your next mission with something orange and plastic that I picked up from TJ Hughes.. It’s digital and it has faux Adidas stripes on it.” 

“Perish the thought,” Bond murmurs, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, bad mood seeping away. 

When Bond returns from Syria, medical resets his broken nose, splints his finger, and sends him on to M and the rest of the dual command for debrief. He makes his way back to his flat that evening tired and with a headache throbbing between his temples. Joint task force missions always take longer to debrief. 

When he opens his door, Alec Trevelyan is sitting on his couch, eating a sandwich and watching Die Hard. 

“James” he grins, “you look like shit. Who on earth installed your security system? It was fiendish.” 

Bond hasn’t seen Alec in five years, since he went deep undercover in Russia. His throat feels unexpectedly tight. 

“Do you have one of those for me?” he gestures at the Pret a Manger bag and holsters his drawn PPK. 

“Obviously. In the fridge.” Alec has, also, already found the bottle of Russian Standard in the cupboards. Bond goes and gets himself a glass. 

Bond eats his chicken sandwich, sat next to Alec in content silence until finally 006 says, “London feels weird.” 

“Hmmmm. I did six months just recently in Colombia.” 

Alec laughs, big and loud, “Jamesy? A whole six months undercover? All at once? Wonders never cease. Maybe you’ll be a real grown up spy soon.” He digs his fingers into Bond’s shoulder. 

“Ha.” 

“Tell me about this new quartermaster. Is he as much of a snot nosed little public school boy as he looks?” 

“He’ll do.” 

Alec looks at him, eyes squinting. “Alright, is he?”

“Helped me out with Silva. They catch you up with that?”

“They did.” 

“Helped me out a few times after that as well, with Spectre. He’s alright. He’s… clever. Loyal. Brave. Tougher than he looks.”

“My god,” Trevelyan murmurs, teasing, “Are you in love?”

“When are they sending you back to Vladivostok?”

Alec hums speculatively. “He’s got an ass you could bounce a ruble off of.”

“He’d probably incinerate you with a robot if you tried, but go ahead and give it a go.” 

Bond’s drunk when he suddenly realizes it’s two a.m., he’s exhausted, and desperate for sleep. Alec had insisted on catching up on the past three years worth of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, and produced his own bottle of Tovarich out of his luggage to bribe Bond into acquiescing. Between his hasty egress from Syria, the flight, medical, and his hellish five and a half hour debrief, he's had maybe four hours sleep in the last 76. 

“I’ve got some blankets for the couch,” Bond says, wandering towards the linen closet. 

Alec follows behind him. “I’m too bloody old to sleep on a couch.” He moves past Bond into the bedroom and starts undoing his shirt. 

“_I’m_ not sleeping on the couch,” Bond protests as Alec lays his shoulder holster on the bedside table. 

“Suit yourself.” Alec steps out of his shoes, and tosses his shirt into Bond’s laundry basket. He catches Bond eyeing the Walther P99 on the bedside table. “Don’t worry James, if I ever shoot you, you’ll be awake for it.” He looks so very serious, wavering there in front of Bond’s eyes, hair mussed and eyes red. 

Bond sighs and starts taking off his own suit. By the time he’s brushed his teeth and come to bed, Alec’s already under the covers, eyes closed. He hasn’t slept with someone else in the bed since Angel, who had a tendency to latch on like a squid and cuddle. Alec of course stays firmly on his own side. He’s not asleep though. Bond can tell from his breathing. 

“Do you think you might have to ever?” Bond asks, quietly, when he’s starting to think maybe Alec _is_ asleep. 

The answer, when it comes is slow and a little vicious. “What the fuck have you been doing that you think I’ll ever be given your name, James.” 

“Nothing. Just.” He pauses. “I’m 42. I won’t be in the field forever. I don’t think I can stand working behind a desk.” Alec’s watch ticks very very faintly. Bond can hear it where he’s rolled over to face Bond, leaning against the pillow. “Not many double-ohs live through their retirement, I thought…”

“Mallory isn’t going to shoot you behind the shed like a dog who can’t hunt anymore.” Alec sounds _mad_.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The room feels too hot, and a little spinny with the lights out. Bond hasn’t been this drunk in a long time. Didn’t think he could be. “I was just thinking. I wouldn’t mind so much. If it was you. I couldn’t stand it if it was one of the newer ones. Can you imagine, if it was 003?”

“Fuck,” Alec groans, “it’s a good job I came back, James. It’s worse than I thought, you dramatic old bastard. Go to fucking sleep.” 

When Bond wakes in the morning, he’s horrifically hungover but the whole apartment smells of eggs and coffee.It isn't just an unexpected fry up, but having Alec puts a bounce back in Bond’s step he didn’t realize he’d lost. He whistles on their way into the office, and typing up his mission report even seems less odious when he can take breaks to prank call Alec’s office next door. 

They take a two hour lunch on the patio seating of the Riverside. “Get something as takeaway for your boffin,” Alec says after they’ve laughed until they're crying, remembering their last time in Zagreb together. 

“I haven’t got a boffin.” 

“Your door alarm nearly electrocuted me. He looks like the sort who forgets lunch. Get him the crab cakes.”

“He’s a vegetarian,” Bond says before he can stop himself. 

“For fuck’s sake.” 

When the waitress comes back Alec orders a vile sounding vegan sweet potato casserole as takeaway. “If you won’t, I will,” he tells Bond, unrepentant. 

Bond never gets a chance to deliver the lunch. He gets intercepted by M, walked down a hall while M talks to him about an escalating situation in Odessa. They stop in front of a door. “When are you sending me?” Bond asks. 

“What? Oh, no, 008 was already in Bucharest, we can get her there much more quickly. I was just filling you in, in case the situation escalates any further and we need a second double-oh on the ground. Also, I’d rather hoped you’d look at her notes on the situation she’s leaving in Bucharest. She think she’s smells a mole, but can’t find anything concrete. A second pair of eyes might help. No, no, this is your stop.”

Bond looks at the door. Looks back at M.

M smiles at him. “You’re overdue an appointment with psych. You’ll like Dr. Babić, Bond. I picked her especially for you.” He claps Bond on the shoulder. “Good work in Damascus.” And, like that, smiling, he walks off down the hall, even as the door opens. 

Dr. Hannah Babić looks to be in her mid to late twenties. She has a Canadian accent, dimples, a cupid’s bow mouth, a firm handshake, and long long legs. Bond undoes the second button of his suit jacket as he sits down in her office and says, “Honestly, I would have thought they’d go out of their way to keep me away form beautiful psychologists, at this stage.”

Dr. Babić does the sort of smiling that crinkles the corners of her eyes. It’s a very effective tool, makes people seem kinder, more trustworthy. Open and engaging and charming. Her body language is inviting and relaxed. “Never fear, Mr. Bond,” she says, “I’m a lesbian.”

Bond throws his head back and laughs. “Of course you are.” M really is determined.

Dr. Babić grins again. Her office smells vaguely of cinnamon. There’s _tapestries_ on the wall like a uni dorm, and various… _knickknacks_. The whole place looks like it’s probably harboring a cat somewhere, like he’s stepped outside of MI6 and into the reading nook of a second hand bookshop.

“Cup of tea?” she asks. Bond opens his mouth to say no, can't stand the stuff, and somehow says yes instead, amusement carrying him through into tolerating it all. It’s a new angle they’ve never really tried on him before. She’s so unlike the cut glass coolness and refinement of Madeleine, her calm reserve, those knife edge moments of tension in her office, it’s almost disorienting. 

There’s a few minutes of faffing about with the tea. Bond declines sugar, and asks for lemon and tells her next time he'd prefer espresso. Or scotch. She makes hers so milky it’s practically white.

“Housekeeping,” Dr. Babić says, when she’s taken her first sip. “Do you have preferred pronouns?”

Bond blinks in surprise. “He/him,” he answers, finally, thinking he wouldn’t have even understood what she was asking or how to answer if he hadn’t spent that afternoon talking to Esther.

“Alright,” she says, dimpling at him again, “your file says you identify as heterosexual, but are flexible as missions demand.”

Bond inclines his head. “As you say.”

“OK. Anything in particular you don’t wish to talk about? Topics or words you find upsetting, smells or other sensory things you dislike. Allergies?”

“No. Dr. Babić. May we get on with it?”

She only nods. “You get the same questions as anyone else. Last one, is there anything you would _like_ to talk about today?”

“I would rather not be here at all.”

“Fair enough.”

“Let’s just hurry through the part where you ask about all the things you think are symptoms of PTSD or maybe just sociopathy, I evade all your prying questions, you give me a halfhearted warning about alcoholism then rubber stamp my paperwork, and we part ways amicably.”

Dr. Babić leans forward on the couch opposite him, chin on her hand. “Mr. Bond.” She makes very good eye contact, eyes warm and amber brown and sincere, voice soft but not overly soppy. “Do you like football?”

Bond sighs. “When I have a chance to watch it. Sure.”

She grins at him. “Are you familiar with the sports terminology ‘generational talent’.”

“I am.”

“Double-Ohs are expensive, like any top scoring offensive players. They’re expensive to buy, and expensive to keep, but they’re worth it. And even among Double-Ohs, I’m given to understand you’re not the sort that comes along every year.”

“Is this where you compare me to David Beckham? I think I’m a touch more handsome, personally.” He shifts in his seat. “Certainly I have a better tailor.” 

“This is where I tell you that no one that signs my paycheck is particularly eager for me to bench you. You’re 42 years old and I’m sure you feel like desk work or retirement is a doom awaiting you on the horizon, but I assure you, getting the most productivity out of the last years of your contract, so to speak, is in our best interest as well as yours. You’ve been doing this a long time. I’m going to assume your mind has taken as many hits as times your body has been shot, stabbed, or concussed. The how and why are irrelevant, and to be perfectly frank, I'm going to take them as read already. My job, you see, is to give you functional help that will keep your top performance level for as long as possible. I work in practical solutions, not navel gazing.”

She smiles with her dimples again. Goddamnit. Bond might actually not hate her.

“So, what? You’re a mental cortisone shot and ACE bandage.” 

Dr. Babić inclines her head at him. “As you say.” The corner of her mouth is pulling up just a fraction at the side as she echoes his own words. She looks, perpetually, like she’s just heard a very good joke. 

When he leaves Six that afternoon, Alec’s waiting in the lobby for him, leaning against a pillar and playing with his phone. 

“Dr. Babić?” he asks, falling into step next to Bond. 

Bond grunts.

“They got me the day after I was back too. Did Mallory pull that trick of walking with some urgency down the hall and talking to you about an escalating situation in Kinshasa?”

“It was Odessa for me.”

“Lucky,” Alec hums, “Odessa's nice this time of year.”

The next day M calls him in to his office. 

“Bond.” 

“M,” Bond responds peaceably, leaning back in his chair. 

“Your report on the Syria mission.”

“Yes.” Bond gives his blandest smile. “You did say you wanted it done in a timely fashion.” 

“Yes, and I was quite impressed with your promptness.”

“I’m glad to hear it, M.”

“However, it doesn’t escape my notice that this is not a factual report of the events of your Syria mission.”

“Is it not?”

“No, it is not. This is, in fact, a brief summary of the third Horatio Hornblower novel.”

“What a remarkable coincidence, sir.” Bond refuses to feel even the slightest sympathy for M, not when 003 had been around to send instead. The snot nosed little psychopath actually gets on well with the CIA. If Bond had to suffer than so too shall M. 

Bond feels a certain lightness in his step out of M's office. Tapas, he thinks, maybe they'll go get tapas, and he can tell Alrc what M's face looked like when he said "At least change the bloody names, Bond."

When people speak about trust, they tend to do so, in Bond’s experience, as a binary. You trust someone, or you don’t. 

What Bond knows of trust is that people act according to their personality, according to their character, whatever it may be. You can trust people to act in the manner that follows all of their previous actions. 

You can trust that someone, anyone, will always have a price, but that price varies drastically according to their nature. The cynic might argue everyone has a dollar amount, but in Bond's experience love, both romantic and familial, vengeance, safety, boredom are just as valuable chips, if not more so. Everyone's price is different but Bond trusts his own ability to guess the correct currency. 

Bond trusts his own ability to read people. He trusts the bone deep lessons he’s had to learn over his career that trust is about trusting someone not as far as you can throw them, but only as much as you are willing to allow them to throw you. 

M sends him to France and Bond sits outside a cafe, sips an espresso and waits for Eduard Prévot to leave work. He tails him for 10 city blocks while faking a telephone conversation on his mobile and watching what Eduard Prévot watches. Does he stare at his phone? Does his head turn for women? Men? Does he look in bookstores or stop to talk with acquaintances? Does he buy groceries, and if so what kind and how much? 

Eduard Prévot doesn’t linger at 1 euro used book racks, boutique clothing shops, bakeries, flower shops or art galleries. His eyes track towards a Maserati at an intersection and he pauses, for just a second, when walking by a jewelers, looking not at the display of engagement rings in the right window, but at a row of Rolexes in the left. 

Eduard Prévot is a greedy, career oriented middle management type with aspirations. Bond can read him like a book, from the walk, from the style of his suit and his choice of shoes and haircut, right down to his very smile.

Q would probably say he could have told Bond that even quicker, just by looking at his online presence. 

Does tell him that, in fact, when Bond’s faking his telephone conversation and Q turns on the connection on the other end. 

“Of course,” Bond agrees, “but my way involves a walk on a pleasant autumn afternoon in Paris and yours involves you sitting in a basement.” 

“We’ve already got a full file on him, 007.” Q says with the weariness of a man who’s spent the past 6 months hunting down tenuous leads to find Prévot’s connection to their target. 

“Now, quartermaster, I may be an outdated old warship--” 

“Bond...”

“But I like to get to know a man before I manipulate him into telling me how best to kill his boss.” 

“And stalking someone for a couple of kilometers is how you like to get to know them?”

“Well,” Bond smirks, “I guess I’m just a romantic, but it really does set the ambiance of the evening.”

There’s a long suffering sigh on the other end of the line. 

Two days later, Bond shoots Aurélien Naudé, notorious both for his paranoid reclusiveness, and for fencing stolen intelligence secrets, outside a farmhouse on the outskirts of Neufchâtel-en-Bray. It’s a different sort of adrenaline spike than something with close combat, or leaping off a burning roof top, but it still fizzes in Bond’s blood. The shot’s clean, Q confirms the kill, and Bond gets in his rented Citroen, has a quiet lunch in Calais, and is back in London in time to debrief before anyone’s left the office for the afternoon. 

M looks at him warily over his desk. “Are you quite feeling alright, 007?”

“Remarkably well, M.” 

He glances at his laptop. “Well, I don’t have any reports of trucks exploding on the A16. No unexplained explosions anywhere. The gendarmerie appear to be investigating an unfortunate hunting accident, and I’ve no news of any embassies, banks, hotels, or museums bursting spontaneously into flames within the past two days. Are you _quite_ sure you’re well, Bond?” 

“Splendid.”

“You didn’t happen to accidentally bed any stunningly beautiful scientist slash nuclear arms manufacturers during your lunch in Calais?” 

“A gentleman hardly likes to kiss and tell, M.” 

M sighs. “Very well, Bond. Well done. Get out of my office.” 

It’s not until he’s gone back to his flat and found Alec sitting on his couch in a vest and pair of joggers, playing some ridiculous video game, that the fizzing stifled adrenaline of it, bottled and stagnating in his veins, reaches unbearable levels. “You’re still here?” Bond asks. 

Alec doesn’t even look away from the screen. “You know the Savoy has me blacklisted.”

“So stay at the Dorchester.” 

“But I’ve missed you so, James.” Alec says, deadpan, and then kills a zombie on the screen with a head shot. The noise of the game, the thumping background music, the zombie noises, grate on Bond’s ears, like nails on a chalkboard, like electricity on his skin. It makes his jaw clench. 

Bond has a moment, peeling off his suit in his bedroom when he thinks that he could go out and find someone. Like… Like he did in Dresden. But it’s London. Even if Alec hadn’t made the place his personal Airbnb, Bond has no delusions of privacy in London. He steps into the shower to wash the car ride off his skin, and tells himself he’ll go out. Find a woman. Alec looks disinclined to leave the couch, so Bond should be able to go out on his own, find someone interesting for the evening, take her somewhere quiet. 

When he steps out of the bath, Alec’s sitting on his bed. 

“Get off my bed, Alec,” he manages to say, somehow, as if Alec hasn’t been sleeping in it since he came back. 

“You’re in a rotten mood.” 

“If I was in a rotten mood, you’d be bleeding.”

“Now you’re just sweet talking me, James,” Alec says and pushes himself off to stand in front of him, close, so close, so that Bond can smell the scent of him, feel him warm against his skin, nearly taste the whiskey on his breath. He grips Bond’s wrist, hard, bones shifting underneath his fingers. “You’re back soon. Mission must have gone so smooth….” He twists his hand, just a little, “and you didn’t even have an excuse to linger and find some way to fuck it out of your system before you were sitting back in the office again.” 

He and Alec don’t do this, really. Not in London. Not in _England_. Never, really, in any place where they weren’t shuddering down off their adrenaline highs in some grim little safehouse with no television, no contact, no women, and no lubrication other than spit or gun oil. It’s not ever anything other than what it is. Adrenaline. Testosterone. The last time was six years ago, in Bishkek. Bond had a broken ulna and Alec a graze of a gunshot wound on his thigh that kept seeping blood. 

It’d made better slick than the spit. 

Alec jerks him off, standing there, one hand pulling Bond’s towel away and wrapping around him, the other squeezing his shoulder and then sliding, slowly from his shoulder to neck. When his fingers wrap around Bond’s throat, squeeze just lightly against his jugular, warm against his skin, Bond shudders and comes. Alec wipes the mess on Bond’s towel with a casual roughness, and falls back onto Bond’s bed. Bond gives up any pretense and lays on his back next to him. 

“Take the edge off?” Alec asks. 

Bond just grunts in answer and then says, “I was going to go get dinner. Find some company.” 

Alec raises an eyebrow. “Want company finding company?”

“Alright.”

Alec’s hand, heavy, slaps him on the thigh. “We can see if I can get us kicked out of the Dorchester if you like.” 

Bond sighs. “You always did know how to show a man a good time.” 

The Dorchester doesn’t kick them out. Bond wonders if maybe they’ve gotten too old to make the sort of ruckus they used to. No mattresses wind up on the balcony or in the pool. Nothing catches fire. Bond doesn’t even have to shoot anyone. Gillian and Chloe see themselves out around 3 a.m. after they call a cab for them, happy and sleepy. Bond should shower; he smells like sex and sweat and gin, but he’s tired and it’s late, and Alec’s already thrown a towel over the wet spot on his side and laid down. Instead he turns the lights off and goes to bed himself. 

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Bond asks, when Alec’s breathing softly on the other side of the bed and Bond’s drunk enough to want the coddling of some kind of honesty. 

“About what?” 

“About Madeleine.” 

“James.” Alec rolls over to face him, “Jamesy, you have the worst taste in women of any man I’ve ever met. No, I’m not going to ask. How different can it be from any of the rest of them?”

“Well, she’s alive,” James snaps back, with some asperity. 

“Remarkable.”

“I cheated on her with a Swedish engineer who’s part of the design team for McLaren. I met her on a track, she was testing a new supercar. She looked like a Valkyrie in racing overalls.” 

Alec snorts. “Well, and who wouldn’t.” 

“I thought.” Bond grits his teeth. “I was serious. About Madeleine. About leaving Six. I was serious, and three weeks later, I didn’t even…” He’s still not sure why he did it. Besides the obvious. He hadn’t even exactly wanted to, had felt precariously off balance through the whole encounter and then subsequent fall out. When Madeleine had the hotel staff carry his bags out the door, Bond had taken the first flight back to London and not let himself think about it. But Alec doesn’t ask anything, doesn’t volunteer anything that Bond might expect people to say -- that he was panicking from the commitment, or anything like it. He doesn’t even say what he would expect _Alec_ to say, which is if 007, one of SIS's best, got caught in something so banal, it’s because he wasn’t trying very hard to not get caught. Instead he’s silent. 

Bond fights back the urge to respond. He can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound like he's sulking in a way he hasn’t allowed himself since boarding school. Instead sets his jaw, rolls to his side and closes his eyes. He thinks the conversation over, that Alec is also done with it and going to sleep. Nothing good ever comes from openness. He's no idea why he even brought it up. And then, after many long minutes, Alec says, soft but with no particular gentleness,“You were always, really, a one-woman sort of man, James. It’s not any surprise that any women that came after the first one got her fingers in your heart wouldn’t be able to shake you free of her all the way...” 

Bond’s tenses in surprise from both the sound of Alec’s voice, now suddenly closer, as he’s rolled over to Bond’s side of the bed, and by his words. “You mean Tracy?” Bond asks. He hardly ever thinks of Tracy these days, that doesn’t seem right, but surely Alec can’t mean Vesper. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t mean Vesper.

When Alec snorts this time his breath is warm on the nape of Bond’s neck. “No. I mean Elizabeth.”

“Wh---”

Alec wraps his arm over him, his hand flat against Bond’s abdomen, pulling him close. Bond can feel the heat of his chest behind him, the soft spring of his chest hair. “Of course, she’s a bit older than you, and she’s got all those rotten little Corgis. And her husband’s boring as hell, but somehow she’s kept you on your knees for her all these years. Don’t go telling yourself you’re not loyal, James. You’re the most loyal man I’ve ever met. England doesn’t begrudge you a Swedish engineer here or there, why should Madeleine have?”

“Really, Alec?” 

Bond hesitates for a second and then lets his hand lay over top of Alec’s where it’s resting against his belly. Alec lifts his fingers, interlaces them with Bond’s. It feels unbearably intimate. Almost as intolerable as secrets, raw and honest, shared in the dark. “England?” he makes himself joke,”I thought you said I had horrible taste.” 

“I said what I said,” Alec says, mouth now directly on Bond’s neck. “Go to sleep, James.” 

It’s only as he’s falling asleep Bond thinks he hears Alec say, “You'll have to love her enough for both of us, James."

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to DangerCupcake for cheering me through this, and for convincing me to post it. I'm at Superstitionhockey on tumblr but it's not anything to do with James Bond


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